Spiritually Bankrupt

After many years of periodically trying meditation, it finally clicked for me the other day. Pema Chodron, my meditation instructor (who doesn’t yet know that she’s my meditation instructor) was retelling a story her teacher, Chogyam Trungpa, told her. He said life is like a series of big waves that come crashing in and knock you down, over and over again. Each time you get up, a face full of sand, mouth and nose full of water, and another one hits you. She waited for him to say something like, “and after a while, it gets better,” but he didn’t. Disheartened, she asked, “is that all there is?” And he responded, “well, maybe after a while, the waves seem smaller.”

In basic Buddhist meditation practice, the instruction is that you sit, eyes open, and observe your breath. If your mind wanders, you should bring your mind gently back to your breath.

When you actually sit down to practice, though, your mind is buffeted like those strong waves in Chogyam Trungpa’s story. You worry about your next deadline. You relive an annoying conversation you had that morning. You pine away for your upcoming vacation, or date, or raise, or meal. You suffer from the worry, from the regret, and from the attachment to some hope for a better tomorrow or some memory of a better yesterday (in either case, an aversion to your present circumstances). All these vivid mental worlds buffet you like the waves. They pull you away into anger, frustration, envy, disappointment, regret. Or they can pull you into desire and disgust. The waves batter you and fill your face with sand.

You learn from the buffeting how to deal with the buffeting. You learn from life, from making mistakes, from successes, from getting too low and falling into sadness, from getting too high and losing your mind to exuberance. But learning from life comes with stakes – physical injury, losing money, damaging relationships with anger. Why not learn how to handle it when the stakes are lower, when you’re just grappling with the distractions of your mind? Why not practice? That’s what meditation is: practice. When you sit regularly, it’s even called meditation practice.

I’ve been practicing for about two months, not quite daily, for just five minutes each time, and I can say that the waves already seem quite a bit smaller.

4 comments

June 11, 2013

Short Summer Posts Series

With summer getting underway and occasioning some upheaval in my schedule, I’ve decided to do short but more frequent posts during the month of June. I hope you enjoy!

May 27, 2013

Caffeine

A taboo subject, I realize. Every time I mention that I gave up caffeine a year ago, people just shut down. They say, “Whoa, not me!” and run away as quickly as possible before I can open my mouth to explain. Well, no one—except maybe a hacker—can keep me from saying my piece here!

Let me say at the outset that I love coffee – good coffee, that is. I’m a snob. That watered down crap you get at most restaurants doesn’t cut it. I buy the good stuff. I brew the good stuff. You sneer, “I thought you gave up coffee!” Caffeine yes, I did, but coffee, no. I do drink decaf. “But decaf has some caffeine!” you again sneer (this is how every conversation that gets past the clenched jaw phase goes). I drink decaf black tea, too, by the way. What I will say is that a decaf tea in the morning and a cup of decaf coffee twice a week does not a caffeine habit make!

The seed was planted when I heard a psychiatrist talk at a Texas Bar meeting about lawyers, stress, and caffeine. She said that lawyers’ drinking too much coffee contributes to anxiety, stress, and depression, in a profession that already has so much of all three, and she gave a physical basis for it (something having to do with the adrenal glands and a hormone called cortisol). I paid attention, but I filed it away as the work on my desk piled up and responsibilities at home pressed. Coffee was too much of a pleasure and too much of a crutch to even think about giving up.

Like most lawyers, I am always anxious. The practice of law at whatever level, from securities and public affairs all the way to landlord/tenant and personal bankruptcy, always boils down to a singularity: who would prevail in court. And the business of law is no easier nowadays, with much more competition chasing fewer dollars. I haven’t watched Game of Thrones (or just about anything else lately), but I think of practicing law as being like single combat in an arena. You have to use your skill and your wits to stay alive…or win, anyway. I look at everything through that adversarial angle. Our ancestors in the jungles were always on the lookout for predators or other obstacles and dangers, and lawyers are always on the lookout for conflicts and rules and negligence. And we’re doing it almost 24/7 nowadays. Coffee can help you stay sharp to handle all these obstacles, but too much coffee can make you jittery, over-reactive, and angry, and ultimately can dehydrate you, make you depressed, and add pounds to your frame (or so the science says).

Also like most lawyers, I got into the law in the first place because I’m argumentative, quick witted, sharp tongued, bossy, and I like to win. Those traits don’t always translate well into life with small children. I have a tendency to react quickly and harshly when something happens around the house that I don’t like, much the same way as when something happens in the office that I don’t like. When my daughter started kindergarten last year and had to be out of the house by 7:15, I would get up earlier than her, have a cup of coffee to get me going, and then promptly harangue her all morning to eat, wash up, change, and get out the door. If she lollygagged, I would get stressed out by the time constraint (I don’t want to be crosswise with a truant officer any more than with a judge!), and I’m sure I made the mornings as unpleasant for her as I did for myself. I decided to move my coffee drinking to the afternoon. But after blowing up in the office a couple of times and having trouble going to sleep at nights (which did not make the mornings easier), I decided that the caffeine had to go.

The change radiated out through other contexts. It turns out being less caffeinated makes you more patient and a better listener. You stop vibrating. Things do not feel as urgent. You don’t have to have the last word. You don’t have to be the quickest wit in the room. Vistas of possibility open up. Where there was previously stress, there is now calm determination. Where you once craved distraction, now you can focus. Rather than competition, you can feel compassion. Rather than anxiety, there is calm.

Postscript: I had 4 decafs during a morning meeting the other day, and afterwards I thought my blood was just going to boil out of my veins. I was jittery and slightly dizzy. The next day, I had a withdrawal headache. After one day! My understanding is that 4 decafs have as much caffeine as a regular, brewed cup of coffee, but even so, caffeine must be a potent drug to cause withdrawal symptoms after one day of not using it. As much as I love the logo, I’m not sure I’ll be drinking Death Wish coffee anytime soon. Perhaps you feel that you are not as susceptible as me, or that you don’t think caffeine is very dangerous. In that case, be my guest.

P.P.S. Caffeine is not just a problem for lawyers. From Radical Acceptance by Tara Brach:

“I turn to English breakfast tea to give me the boost I think I need to remain productive throughout the day and often into the night. The price is that I become speedy, impatient, and distant from those I love. I get disconnected from my body as I relentlessly urge myself onward to get yet another thing done.

“At a psychotherapy conference I attended, I saw a poster that struck home. In it two homeless men are sitting on a park bench. One is saying to the other, ‘I used to have a private jet, condo in Aspen, and be the CEO of a Fortune 500 company. Then I switched to decaf.’”

P.P.S. BBC article the other day on caffeine consumption (here). I like the line that says, essentially, that you have to figure out your tolerance level for yourself.

7 comments

May 1, 2013

Resolution, Part 2: Integration

So after all that, what was my (now 3 months ago) new year’s resolution? One word: Integration.

n. The making up or composition of a whole by adding together or combining the separate parts or elements; combination into an integral whole: a making whole or entire.

(courtesy of the Oxford English Dictionary)

There are four big buckets of stuff in my life (in order of the amount of time they take): family, work, me (social life, reading, writing), and yoga. As you might guess, these realms frequently come into conflict. The most obvious example is that work can keep me from spending time with my family or practicing yoga.

But it was my desire to write and the conflicts that produced that really got me thinking. A couple of years ago, I decided I needed to take my shot at writing fiction, that if I didn’t become a regular fiction writer, I would die unfulfilled. I spent a lot of time at it and stressed about it even more. I struggled to set aside time to write and was fiercely possessive of that time. Meanwhile, I had two young children, a brand new law firm, and had just become a trustee. Not surprisingly, the fact that I suddenly wanted a bunch of time to myself led to a lot of conflict at home and at work as well as within myself.

The answer? I gave up writing. Soon, though, I realized that the urge had not gone away, and that I needed to do something. But I wanted to do something that didn’t create conflict. Hence the birth of this blog, a place where I can write about the relationships between all the areas of my life. There are ways that my family life or my yoga help my work, or my work and family life can help me in my personal sphere (the “me” bucket). It turns out that writing doesn’t have to be scissors but can instead be the glue.

I have a healthy interest in charts, so I thought I make one.

So, starting with “work” in the left-hand column and traveling towards “yoga” on top, you can see that work influences my yoga by creating motivation for me to go to yoga, i.e. a need to de-stress. Moving a column to the right, work influences my family life by inspiring me to be as respectful with my family as I am in court. Then, next, work influences writing by providing conflict in my life, conflict being necessary for all good writing. Perhaps it is anticlimactic to put the work row first, because that is the one that is really surprising to me. Work can be pretty hard and stressful, but it has been great for me to understand the very positive ways it has influenced my life. The rest of it – how great and sustaining yoga, writing, and family life are – is great, but more obvious. The real challenge for me is to integrate work into the rest of my life and create a fulfilling whole…and a (hopefully) interesting blog!

February 25, 2013

Resolution, Part 1

I don’t make New Year’s resolutions. I’m usually too busy around the holidays, between the kids being off from school, end-of-year accounting for my firm, and dealing with January 1st foreclosures. I’m more reflective right after the holidays as I am gearing up to make something happen in the new year. I did make a resolution this year (albeit one I formulated back in the summer), but that will be the subject of my next post, “Resolution, Part 2.”

Despite not having the habit of resolving out loud on January 1, I have changed tremendously and accomplished a great deal over the last several years. I have become a better lawyer, a better colleague, a better dad, a better yogi. I have lost 50 lbs. I have learned the ins and outs of my new position as a bankruptcy trustee. I have built a new law firm. People have congratulated me for these successes over the years, but I am just at a point now of being able to take a deep breath and acknowledge the changes and reflect. The two things I can say with certainty are that: 1) I changed in ways I did not anticipate much less intend, and 2) the changes were accompanied by a lot of suffering.

By suffering, I mostly mean mental, not physical, pain. It’s worrying about an upcoming hearing. It’s the dread of making a mistake. It’s the disappointment of your client dropping off the face of the earth and not paying you. It’s the frustration that occurs when you’re trying to transition between two types of billing software. It’s the annoyance of trying to get a resistant kid out the door on time so you are not late to court. It’s the remorse over eating three slices of pizza and ice cream when you really only needed one slice and a salad. It’s the regret when you miss your yoga class because you couldn’t stop yourself from answering e-mails. It’s the pain of wanting something, but getting something different, which brings me back to my first point.

I did not anticipate the big changes in my life. I never even wanted to practice law (I went to law school because of my interest in legal philosophy, and I planned to be a professor!). I didn’t much want to have kids. I ran away from yoga and all things connected to my Indian heritage. I pooh-poohed diet and exercise. It is as though almost everything I am today is something I never wanted to be, and yet now I wouldn’t have it any other way. I think the events that occur in your life don’t occur due to conscious choice, but based on the actions of the people around you, the choices of the market, your historical circumstances, and so on. The choice you have to make is whether to embrace the changes that come out of these forces, or to resist them or hide from them, through things like anger, denial, or depression, or even drugs or alcohol. And perhaps even this choice is not under your control. Perhaps it is predisposition or karma or luck.

Even if you don’t truly get to make the BIG DECISIONS, you do get to make hundreds of little daily decisions. For me, the primary source of my recent suffering has been my work, adjusting to being a dad, and dealing with the loss of my parents. I’ve turned to studying meditation and yoga to ease the suffering, and those have taught me to stay with my wobbly poses and my troubled mind, and that in turn has given me the strength to cope with kids, changes at work, and life in general. And these changes, which came with so much effort, have opened up a pathway to contentment and even joy. When I am able to calm a crying kid or a stressed-out client, or I’m able to accomplish something new, like conducting my first bankruptcy auction, I feel like I am doing what I was meant to do.

4 comments

November 20, 2012

Smile!

P.S. Here’s the latest study on smiling, courtesy of the Wall Street Journal.

People from back home ask me all the time if I think of myself as a Texan. I moved to Austin from New York 18 years ago to attend UT Law, and except for two years from 1999 to 2001 I’ve lived here ever since. Despite my prolonged residency in the state, for years and years I answered that I definitely was NOT a Texan. I stubbornly read the New Yorker and the New York Times, rooted for New York sports teams, ate all the lox I could get my hands on, and so on.

Despite my resistance, Texas has been great to me. Austin is a bit different from the rest of Texas but shares at least one trait with the rest of the state: the people are very friendly. So friendly, in fact, that Texans often do something that doesn’t happen much in New York: they smile and greet others on the street. For many years, I resisted this absurd habit and, like a good New Yorker, I kept my eyes steadily fixed forward.

Throughout my years of exile from New York in Austin and San Francisco (‘99 to ‘01), I kept up my subscription to The New Yorker magazine and a couple of years ago, I read a sad article (accessible here) about people committing suicide by jumping from the Golden Gate Bridge. In it, I came across the following passage, and I have not been able to get out it of my head since.

The bridge comes into the lives of all Bay Area residents sooner or later, and it often stays. Dr. Jerome Motto, who has been part of two failed suicide barrier coalitions, is now retired and living in San Mateo. When I visited him there, we spent three hours talking about the bridge. Motto had a patient who committed suicide from the Golden Gate in 1963, but the jump that affected him most occurred in the seventies. “I went to this guy’s apartment afterward with the assistant medical examiner,” he told me. “The guy was in his thirties, lived alone, pretty bare apartment. He’d written a note and left it on his bureau. It said, ‘I’m going to walk to the bridge. If one person smiles at me on the way, I will not jump.’”

Motto sat back in his chair. “That was it,” he said. “It’s so needless, the number of people who are lost.”

I thought about that passage over and over the way you think about tragedies in the world that happen far away. But I began to notice people as I walked down the street or through the hallways at work, and I asked myself: will that person die if I don’t smile? I didn’t want to be the one who let them walk by me into oblivion. So I decided to smile. At first, I had to remind myself and gradually overcome feeling foolish or shy. But it has become second nature now. And because of this, along with other changes in my life—like raising little native Texans—I’ve begun to think of myself as just a tiny bit Texan.

People smile to express their happiness, but they say the reverse is true as well. Several years ago, Scientific American reported (here) on studies that seem to indicate that smiling can make you feel happier. I find this to be true in my personal experience as well. I can be walking down the hall stewing over a deadline or a hard case, and I’ll stop and hold the door open for someone and smile, and it will be a reminder to me that I am very blessed, that fortune goes down and comes back up again, that there are many who suffer far worse than me and can be helped by a smile.

3 comments

July 31, 2012

The Big Picture

As a bankruptcy lawyer and trustee, I am caught up in the day to day minutiae of my work: advising clients, conducting creditors’ meetings, filing Motions to Sell, serving my firm, mentoring my colleagues, and on and on. These things consume me every day as though they were fire. I counsel my clients every day not to become too caught up in their financial difficulties, to take a deep breath, to embrace the promise of a fresh start, and to remember that life goes on after you suffer a financial reversal. But who is there to remind me to have some perspective? It is up to me to take a deep breath and remind myself as often as I can that I am a dad and husband and brother, as well as an individual, a citizen, a human, a creature, an Earthling, a child of the universe, a little piece of creation. Two items have really brought home to me the big picture in the last few weeks. One of them is the discovery of the Higgs-Boson, an elementary particle that confers mass on all the other particles in the universe, including us. News of the discovery (and it takes something for me to read the news any more – more on that later) reminded me that according to the scientific discoveries of the last century, we are ultimately made of energy (that’s what E=MC² means), which reminded me in turn that this truth is represented artistically at CERN (the laboratory where they made the discovery).

The statue is of the Hindu deity, Shiva, as Nataraja, the Lord of Dance. According to Hindu mythology and the plaque at the CERN statue, Shiva’s cosmic dance represents the fundamental energy of the universe.

The second item that gave me some perspective in the past few weeks is that I started watching a video course on the Hubble Telescope. The sheer, jaw-dropping beauty of the images, combined with their scientific import caused my imagination to go all vertiginous. My favorite is the Hubble Deep Field, which follows a tiny sliver of sky back almost to the origin of the universe, showing stars and galaxies that in some cases no longer even exist. As I can’t seem to resist sprinkling mythology into this post, it reminds me of a quote from the Bhagavad Gita, in which it is said of God, “If the radiance of a thousand suns were to burst forth at once in the sky, that would be like the splendour of the Mighty One. I am mighty, world-destroying Time.” Now that is a big picture!

1 comment